


Distance

by ailixandrite2dot0 (AILiSeki)



Series: Tumblr ficlets [5]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26551210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AILiSeki/pseuds/ailixandrite2dot0
Summary: Prompt: Famethyst and Jasper; Distance
Series: Tumblr ficlets [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930816





	Distance

Some gems were meant to work alone, and so they didn’t enjoy teamwork or even spending too long around crowds. Quartz soldiers were the opposite: they were supposed to work as a team and so they craved being around their kind.

Jasper couldn’t be sure of when things changed for her. She remembered her old team, most of them now gone, and she remembered being aware even back then that she was the one doing most of the work there. Yet, she didn’t mind it. At some point, though, the pressure got to her. She started believing the insults thrown at all betas, and when she had the chance to improve her own standing, leaving them all behind, she took it without looking back.

(Deep down, though, she believed herself to be as much of a failure as all of them. What good were her so-called perfect form and exceptional cut when she couldn’t do anything to prevent her Diamond’s fate?)

(One would think learning her Diamond’s true fate would rid her of such thoughts, but it wasn’t the case. All she could think was that she had failed to realize her Diamond’s true wishes, and instead got in her way multiple times.)

(And then she was left with a new, weak, tiny, half organic Diamond. If that was her Diamond, what did it make her? She felt like a joke.)

But through all this time, as Jasper isolated herself more and more, closed off herself to everyone as she went on a mad quest for more and more power, she couldn’t shut off the basic instinct of craving company, intimacy even. She felt the craving and she never gave in. Maybe it was a way to hurt herself. Maybe it was all the shame she felt from being who she was, from her humble origins, and from her big failures.

It was clear that she forgot how to be sociable, to have friends, to be a friend. She watched gems walking around Little Homeworld, chatting with each other and with humans, laughing, singing, dancing, and doing many other useless activities. She couldn’t imagine herself joining them. If at least her D- Steven had let her go with him… she learned that he didn’t want to be treated as a Diamond, and even if she didn’t understand it, she really wanted to respect it. He also wanted her to heal and make friends, and it made sense for her that he should be her first friend. She didn’t know how it worked but she could figure it out with him. But Steven was gone and she was surrounded by all those gems and humans who were nothing like her, who couldn’t possibly understand her.

With a sigh, she looked up at the sky. Maybe before trying to find new friends, she should try reuniting with her old ones. Maybe. Maybe one day.


End file.
